


The A-Team

by FauxPause



Series: Lepidoptera Modum [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (s8 wtaf was that), Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Bad Decisions, Butterfly Effect, Cannon with a twist, Child Soldiers, Curtis I'm gonna figure something out for you bby, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Disobeying Orders, F/F, F/M, Family Bonding, Family Reunions, Fix-It, Flawed characters, Good Intentions, Holt Family in General, M/M, Mirror fic, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, No character bashing, Pidge left unattended, Pining, Power of Friendship, Sabotage, Shiro (Voltron) Can't Cook, Slow Burn on the Klance, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Treachery, broganes, hard questions, let them make mistakes, okay now it's officially a, sister fic, think of the children, when your favs are problematic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-07-01 18:42:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15779880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FauxPause/pseuds/FauxPause
Summary: Sister fic to The Meme-Team.Keith wakes up in an apartment that's long been vacated with familiar faces that should no longer exist.Then he wakes up everyone else.Or, Keith Kogane and the Future That Wasn't.Or Or: Keith Kogane makes old friends, dodges any and all attempts to keep the past in one piece, and gets back into space with all the patience he's capable of. Which is to say, not much.





	1. Six Impossible Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." 
> 
> "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." "

Keith wakes up.

His boots aren’t on.

Maybe that’s a weird first thought for some people, but frankly, it’s been years since Keith has been comfortable enough _anywhere_ to sleep without them on. Without needing to be able to up and run within a moment's notice. The only time he’s taken his boots off in the last year was to either was them or change into another set (the overwhelming relief of getting out of his very worn mamoran suit and into Red’s well-maintained armor is something he’s never going to share).

The next thought is that, well, he’s not in his armor either. However clean, the paladin armor didn’t lend itself to comfort. Sleeping in the chest plate was the one thing he hadn’t ever quite worked out how to do.

He… thinks he might actually be dressed in sleep clothes? Not the hospital gowns they had for a while or the Cadet oranges, but actual pajamas. Which is as uncomfortable a thought as the darn things are soft. It means either someone dressed him or he somehow found clothes and changed without being able to recall it.

Keith’s never forgotten a day in his life. Most days he wishes he could.

His eyes stay closed, resisting the need to snap open and take in his surroundings. But sometimes, the best offense was launched by surprise. He focused, listening for the noise of anyone breathing.

An air-vent rattled.

Silence.

Eyebrows drew together.

_Patience was never my strong suit..._

Keith’s eyes snap open. He sits upright the same second, body tensed and primed to lunge- He’s... on a couch. Alone. Keith blinks, eye adjusting to the low light of the bizarrely familiar feeling room. He drops his shoulders and swings his bare feet to sit more comfortably.

Fingers slip restlessly against a smooth sheet that’s spread beneath him, tugging at it out of some odd sense of misplaced irritation. The sheet has been shoved, with military precision and strength, under the cushions and around the frame. He takes a deep breath and takes stock of where he is.

His shoes aren’t on, but he’s still wearing socks. He’s in a pair of sweatpants he hasn’t owned in years. He knows for a fact that the small hole in the right knee is going to rip into an unfixable tear, and is in a t-shirt too boot. A homemade quilt has been kicked to the end of the furniture-turned-bed and a plain pillow plops slowly onto the floor, as if in direct opposition of his racing heart.

The Keith of two years ago would have already charged the front door. The temptation to do so still lingers. His sock covered feet brace against the carpet, the desire to bolt tightening his calves.

He also, Keith acknowledges somewhat ruefully as he sets his feet more firmly on the carpet, would probably have kicked the coffee table into the wall and woken the entire suite... Instead, he carefully slips between the table and the couch and pads into the room at large.

There’s an open floor plan, visibility from pretty much every corner and a lack of windows that niggles at him. He can just make out a kitchen island dotted with bolted down swivel chairs and he has to swallow the gasp that catches in his throat.

There’s a tacky clock stapled to the wall, some sort of joke written along the face in place of numbers and a lazy minute hand that’s never quite on time. Every electronic clock is synchronized in military time, their dull green numbers ticking away the seconds as Keith stands in the kitchen, struck dumb as he’s assailed with the minute details that form the space stretching around him. Little snippets of history beating back the beat of panic for the moment.

He… he’s in _Shiro’s_ garrison apartment. Somehow. It shouldn’t be possible.

He crouches to the carpeted floor, feeling at the sudden cut off from fabric to tile just before the hallway. There’s a chip in the tile from where they’d dropped and recovered the dresser smuggled in one weekend.

The carpet is clean, but stained with age. Worn down with use and the multitude of stressed feet and fingers that have paced across it. He looks up, scanning the room. There it is. A slash of off-grey paint swiped along the main support column. Shiro once tried and failed to flip an omelette; the whole pan had slipped from his hand and ricocheted down the hall in a clatter of teflon and half cooked eggs. They’d never remembered to paint it over properly, only getting that basecoat on and in the wrong shade too; it drove Ada-Keith is on his feet, because holy fuck, _Adam_.

If he’s where he thinks he is, then-

It’s not possible. It’s just not. His feet slap the tiles, anyway. Socks almost causing him to lose balance and he has to push harder for traction. Both socked feet and mind rebelling.

Not possible. Right, _sure_ it isn’t.

His mouth curls into a savage snarl.

It’s just as possible as him getting into the Garrison.

It’s as impossible as aliens and princesses and evil empires. As impossible as playing fetch with the family dog and hearing his mother tell him she _loves_ him.

He’s seen and done nothing but impossible things and if this one turns out to be a nightmare dressed up as a dream? Well, he’s dealt with one of those already this varga. One more won’t k-

The thought jars right out of his head as he smacks into a brick wall. The brick wall grunts and braces against the corridor, something like “Oh, come on, really?” echoing quietly into the dark.

Shiro blinks sleepily down at him, mouth half open in questioning bleariness.

 _Well_ , Keith thinks as he turns his bounce backwards into a deliberate retreat, _it's_ a _Shiro_.

The man before him looks as though he’d just gotten up, eyes not even mostly open. He too is dressed in mismatched pajamas, bare feet wiggling against the air-conditioned tile.

He still manages to get an arm up in a passable block, taking a glancing blow across a muscled forearm.

“Wha- Keith?”

The snarls burst free under his breath, frustration driving him to launch a jab into his opponent's midsection. The strike knocks the wind from the other with a satisfying _thud_.

A hand jabs up under his jaw and Keith narrowly misses biting his own tongue. _Shit!_ He always forgets how fast Shiro is!

Keith spins in under the extended arm, he jabs back out with his elbow and manages to knock an open-handed strike off course.

Something beeps alarmingly, yellow light flashing out from around the Shiro’s wrist. The next series of blows are blocked with aggravating ease, the Shiro not even staggering back and it’s infuriating how Keith can feel himself being forced back down the narrow hallway.

He can’t work out why this clone seems so much stronger; even the one in the laboratory had yielded ground faster! And it _is_ a clone; Shiro’s hair is a jarring white, not black through to his roots. Haggar must not yet know to make that kind of mistake...

Grey eyes are wide awake now and Keith can’t stand the false look of confusion swimming in them as the Shiro shifts from trying to strike him to trying to pin him.

Driven by building rage, Keith spins his weight and lashes out backward in a heavy kick, aiming right for the clone’s core set to crack through unarmored ribs and shatter bone. He _misses_ \- leg stopping inches short from his opponent.

His leg hangs in the air for a long moment, heel almost five inches away from his equally startled target.

 _How the fu-_ He tries to draw it back, but the Shiro doesn’t waste a second. A large hand wraps around his ankle, towing him off balance.

_How did I miss?!_

Keith tries to hop for balance, but a knee to his stomach doubles him over and they go crashing to the hard floor with a loud _THUD_ ,

“Keith! Keith! Calm down!”

He thrashes in the stronghold, turning his head to try and bite at any available skin… he freezes, teeth hovering over a bare forearm. Grey eyes stare down at him in- in concern. Concern and confusion and hurt?

“S-shiro?”

The clone’s, Shiro’s, face slowly falls into something more relaxed, though his grip does not. “Hey, kid. Yeah, yeah it’s me. It’s just me. It’s Shiro.”

He slowly lets up on the force, letting Keith turn back over and sit up.

Keith stares, drinking him in. Letting the chance that one more thing might just be real... This Shiro has fewer frown-lines; fewer lines in general. The scar on the bridge of his nose is just… gone. As if it had never been. His hair is as dark as the day Keith first stole his car. An irritated beep screeches from the Shiro’s wrist. The flashing yellow light suddenly registers as the medical bracers Shiro had been required to wear right through his deployment to Kerberos. (Where Keith thinks he remembers Shiro cheerily saying something about tossing them out the airlock…). His head snaps back up.

“You alright? Was it that dream again?”

It’s _impossible_...

Keith lunges, knowing his target will never expect it - “Oof!” - and wraps his arms around Shiro’s chest. Something… shatters. It feels like glass breaking and for a moment Keith thinks he’s shattered his own ribs. He thinks that of all the things that could have wounded him. maybe it makes sense that’d it be an act of affection. He hangs on anyway, needing to finish the hug he was never able to give. Because if this _was_ Shiro... the ache surges, near enough _storge_ that it feels like it’s ripping out of his chest.

Shiro gasps like Keith succeeded in squeezing all the air out of him.

“...Keith?”

Purple eyes snap up. That tone… Shiro sways backward, one hand pressed tightly to his head.

“Keith where the-” He pulls out of the embrace and staggers to his feet, bracing heavily against the wall once more.

“I was in the Atlas…” Shiro, dark-haired but with eyes filled with exhaustion and lingering terror, stares at the dark hallway with confusion. “Where the hell are we?”

“Shiro!”

A door swings open, “It’s too early for this…”

Both dark heads of hair snap around, “ ** _Adam!_** ”

Poor Adam rocks back under the combined shout, clearly not prepared for this level of energy or startled enthusiasm at his bedraggled arrival.

“...tis I?” Adam looks even more tired than Shiro does, did, had - before Keith… Oh Christ, Keith just _attacked_ Shiro in the _hallway_. The pair eye each other and come to a silent resolution to not tell Adam about the... impromptu spar.

Shiro breaks eye contact to turn and sweep Adam into a crushing embrace. The other’s feet actually leave the floor completely as his limbs flail in smothered confusion. Keith smiles, the low, nostalgic, curl of satisfaction welling up in him more than welcome. Shiro and Adam had been the first couple he’d ever really had the chance to watch and seeing them together - impossibly together - almost seemed to shift the axis of his world back into place.

Like everything had started to fall apart after that first fight…

He can feel his stomach plummet as the realization clicks, _oh_. _OH_. He’d been _asleep on the couch_ , not in the spare room. His room. Which... meant that Shiro must have been sleeping in…

Adam finally escapes back to the floor. He leans out of the embrace, hands braced on Shiro for balance and while Keith can’t see Shiro’s face he winces as those broad shoulders stiffen and then fall. Adam slowly reaches the ground and gently steps out of Shiro’s embrace, hands still resting on the other’s extended arms.

“I- Shiro I’m going to need some more… time. After everything we said about Kerberos, I thought-”

“You’re right about Kerberos.”

“-and I know, I _know_ , that it’s _your_ choice Takashi, but this doesn’t just affec- wait, what?”

Silence fills the hallways. Both Keith and Adam stare at Shiro in mutual, ringing, confusion. Adam leans around Shiro to stare at the pajama-clad cadet. Keith looks into tired brown eyes and shrugs. Even if he did know, Adam wouldn’t get any help from this half of the hallway. Adam seems to realize that but takes Keith’s confusion for the genuine emotion it currently is. Neither of them has a clue where Shiro is going with this…

Shiro, suddenly feeling the weight of his near shouted words and the tired, confused, stares from the two most important people in his life, runs a hand through the back of his scalp. The short hairs of his military regulation cut oddly soothing under his fingertips. He places his hand back on Adam’s elbow and slowly draws the man into another embrace.

“I don’t think anyone should go.”

Adam leans into him, tired, almost instinctively finding comfort in the embrace of his fiance, but his fingers grip tight to the front of Shiro’s shirt in wary confusion.

“But you... Takashi,” nails dig into the worn fabric, “that... doesn’t sound anything like you.”

Their eyes lock, grey with brown and the breath rushes out of the pair of them in mutual sighs and, for a moment, nothing else exists.

Shiro closes his eyes and breaths deep. There is nothing but the weight of the man in his arms. The smell of his shampoo and deodorant, the moth-eaten fabric of his tank-top that they’ve argued a hundred times about replacing but never have. He presses his face against Adam’s hair and hopes the other can’t feel the tears slipping down over his cheeks.

“We’re not ready for what’s out there.”

He wants... with _everything_ in his heart-

Hands press gently against his shoulders, easing him back once more. He opens his eyes slowly. Confused, teary brown eyes stare back at him.

They don’t trace his face. They don’t stare at the scar Shiro knows isn’t there. They don’t seem to be surprised by hair that’s flushed white, don’t seem to be filled with fear over the alien invasion that beat him home.

He doesn't seem to have stared death in the face, just Takashi Shirogane.

Shiro lets his hands drop.

_I was sleeping in the second room._

Adam is talking, backing away. Adam is… going back to bed.

“...okay, I clearly need to go back to sleep. Neither of us are making any sense right now. This is a dream.” He looks at the scuff mark left on the wall from the two Asian males’ collision. “A very loud dream.”

Adam doesn’t _remember_.

“Adam,”

The man flips a hand up and starts to shuffle backward, presumably back to bed.

“I’m not here. I’m a figment of your imagination. I’m actually in bed getting the rest of my eight hours. Contact me in...” He squints down the hall at a clock no one but Keith can probably read in this lighting. “...three hours? Make it four.”

They watch as he finally reaches the door to the bedroom and disappears. The familiar _creak click snick_ of the latch settling something deep within them both, even as the realization sinks heavy in them.

_Adam doesn't remember..._

Shiro sways a little, both of them staring at the closed door. He doesn’t tear grey eyes away from the barrier between him and the impossible man who just staggered back to bed.

“Keith… Where _are_ we?”

Keith leans against the wall, his own tear-filled eyes tracing the tiled floor. _Impossible_.

“...I think we’re in the past.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Storge is one of the types of love. Storge is familial love, specifically the love of a child to a parent or vice versa. You could also classify Shiro and Keith’s relationship as Philia, but Storge has always seemed to be more apt for those two to me.
> 
> **In light of Bex's official statements… I feel the need to state that I personally do not, have not, and will not ship Shiro with any of the human (or partially human) paladins. I, personally, don’t find any appeal in hebephilia nor any sort of romantic notions in ‘grooming’. I do respect that it is fully based in a work of fiction. I also respect that fans are well within their rights to create fantasies utilizing the work as they so choose. However, as they are a VA for a show that "is for 6 year old boys" I do not respect that they have (in the past) encouraged the ship and (most recently) condoned the explicit shipping referred to in her statements. That one of the characters is now canonically of ‘legal’ age does not, in any way, assuage the issues and concerns listed above. 
> 
> If you have come to this fic looking for the pairing referred to above; the back button is on the upper left corner. You are free to your fantasies, but you will not find them, or anything condoning or encouraging them, here. 
> 
> I never, ever, thought I would need to write and post something like this. 
> 
> #OfficallyNotLookingForwardToS8 #MakingAllurance&LoturaLookHealthyLike


	2. A Mad Tea Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I finally get to swaddle Shiro in blankets and give him a cup of tea and a few hours rest. Then, of course, I make him deal with the unpleasant reality that is his life. Meanwhile, Keith influences people, remakes a friend, and Adam has no idea what’s going on anymore.

“I think… we’re in the past.”

“That’s impossible.”

The reaction is knee-jerk, instinctive and thoughtless and maybe only claimed out of 50% desperation. Evil aliens, gladiatorial arenas, sentient robots, and clones? Couldn’t time at least have the _decency_ to stay linear? Shiro didn’t feel like that was asking for too much.

The reality of his impossible memories, and somewhat insane pleas to the universe, crashed down onto his shoulders. He opened his eyes from their scrunched wince right into Keith’s irate gaze. Well. Almost into it.

He presses his lips together, doing his best to swallow down a smile. Keith was, uh, a great deal shorter than he’d last seen him.

He didn’t hide it well enough.

“Not one word.” The _very short_ Black Paladin snarled.

Shiro looked away, doing his best to not laugh. A muffled snicker escaped him anyway, half at the absurdity of it all and half, well... He wasn’t sure Keith would be able to get into some of the higher shelves in the apartment.

His shoulders jerked in silenced laughter, recalling that it _had_ been a problem; Adam often wandering back in the middle of the night complaining that he’d found Keith standing on the counter _again_ , his cup of water totally forgotten.

Shiro dodged Keith’s half-playful swat and moved into the kitchen proper, busying his hands to keep the panic at bay. He opened and then shut one cabinet. Two, three- ah, there. He pulled down a mug and a plastic cup. A snort echoed from across the room when he located the tea tin on the first try.

The microwave beeped softly. He pulled the steaming mug out, wincing in surprise as the ceramic stung his right hand. He flexed the injured fingers, mute surprise ringing through him even as he hid the minor injury from Keith.

_Right. Not metal. That’s… going to take some adjustment._

When had he gotten used to his prosthetics? When had he just… forgotten to check for sharp edges or temperatures before reaching out for something? The tea bag floated up, unhelpful in its steamy silence. He settled back down on the couch.

“It could be a trap.”

It was Keith’s turn to look away.

“I don’t…”

Shiro set his mug of tea ( _real tea_ , actual tea that looked and smelled and tasted like the tea he remembered and missed and if this was all some sort of cannibalistic nightmare trap then, hell, after everything else? It was almost _worth_ it.) down on the coffee table and waited. After a moment of stalling, Keith huffed a quick breath and faced him.

“It doesn’t feel like… It feels real, Shiro. All of it. The apartment, the couch, the- the tea. All of it feels right I-” He snapped his mouth shut, jaw visibly grinding in frustration. “I’m not explaining this right.”

Shiro reclaimed his steaming cup and took another sip. Keith always had good instincts. Terrible patience, but good intuitive thinking. But, apparently, sometime after Kerberos had gone wrong those instincts had, well, evolved. He didn’t have a better word for it and, judging Keith’s sulking posture, neither did his brother. The kid had gone from being justifiably paranoid, but irritatingly correct, to being almost sensitive to the energy others gave off.

“You… mentioned once that you _felt_ the Blue Lion. Before we found her in the desert.”

Keith shrugged. “I felt _something_. Didn’t have any idea what it was until I came across some of the cave paintings. Hunk was the one who-”

“You weren’t all that far off, though. We didn’t have to go very far from where you parked the bike. And then… well. If you say this,” he waved a hand at the room at large, very carefully _not_ turning to look down the hallway, “feels right? Feels real? Then I believe you.”

The fragile hope in Keith’s eyes twisted like a knife. He wasn’t sure he was any better off.

“Sleep on it,” he raised a hand, preemptively cutting off Keith’s protests.

“If it _is_ some sort of trap, then we’ll handle it when it turns on us.” Shiro’s mouth twisted down, “Anyone capable of arranging _this_ probably has more patience than either of us. No point in tiring ourselves out and creating easy targets.”

He took another sip, doing his best to ignore how Keith’s judgemental gaze jumped between him and his cup. He slurped, long and loud, until Keith rolled his eyes the tiny, tea inappreciative, heathen.

There was a long pause, then curiously, “Have you tried summoning your bayard?”

Keith’s nose wrinkled, either at the fact that the idea _hadn’t_ occurred to him or at the gentle prompting that Shiro still considered him the Black Paladin.

Keith flexed his hand, palm out and fingers bent. Nothing happened. He clicked his tongue. “Doesn’t always work. There’s some sort of… distance limit. If they’re too far away, we can’t summon them.”

Keith tilted his head, “Is this a sign that this is real? Or that it isn’t?”

Shiro shrugged, “I mostly wanted to know if you were going to come at me with a sword next ti-”

He leaned backward, barely dodging Keith’s flailing elbow as he tipped over the couch and started yanking at the cushions.

“Keith, what are you-”

He swung back up, a wrapped dagger clenched tightly in his hands. Their wide eyes met.

“Oh.”

It was… exactly as Shiro remembered it. Dull, beaten, _old_ and, he now knew, inactive. The entire hilt and some of the bottom edge was wrapped in bandages, the crossing of the covers deliberate and frantic in effort to keep the Mamoran symbol hidden.

Keith swallowed and stood, walking around to the other side of the coffee table. He closed his eyes and the dagger flashed, blindingly bright in the low light. When it faded, the full blade, familiar and intimidating, rested in Keith’s hand.

“That’s… pretty convincing.”

A few of the bandages fell to the floor. The symbol glowed, hauntingly purple, long after they finished talking.

 

* * *

 A wry smile ticked Shiro’s lips as he heard Keith scuttle about the front room.

_Probably testing the security._

He didn’t turn to look back, letting Keith make his comfort where he could manage, more than self-aware enough to know that he’d likely be doing the same were he the one on the couch. Shiro walked resolutely down the dark hallway, muscle memory filling in the gaps made by years away from home.

He kept his back to the other door, doing his best to keep it out of his mind. The room before him was only vaguely familiar. He hadn’t stepped foot in it in years, even before Kerberos. Once upon a time, it had been his. More recently (and, okay, nope not thinking too hard on what that meant; that way lay headaches) it was Keith’s. Not, he decided wryly, that anyone would be able to tell by looking at it.

It was almost worryingly impersonal. Minimal clutter and even scanter signs of personality scattered throughout. A few pictures dotted the room. Upon closer examination, they were mainly one’s Shiro had chosen and framed and placed in the room himself when they’d first moved Keith in with them. One or two were newer, though. The bookshelves were mostly empty, their only inhabitants beaten and battered textbooks required by the Garrison. There was a printed sheet of paper pinned to the back of the door; a list of simulation scores. It looked like it was a few years out of date. A set of keys and a switchblade sat next to the photo of the three of them on the dresser, Keith’s scowling face still round and soft. The walls were bare, only a few bits of tack and tape left along them from Shiro’s long removed decorations. The bed was still messy. His fault, more likely than not given the fuzzy recollection he had before Keith knocked several years into his head. Two pillows braced against one another above the tangled sheets twisted into a knot across the hull of the mattress. Shiro sighed.

He squared up to the bed and braced himself. If this was some vile trick… well, he probably needed the rest in order to face it. If it was just a hallucination, then his staying in one place was the safest option for the rest of his team. And if… if it _wasn’t_ either of those things then... Impossible (wonderful, horrible, frightening) or not, he’d certainly slept in worse. Haggar had a cruel streak, one all of her devotees emulated. If this were a galran illusion, they’d draw it out. An hour or two of patience wouldn’t kill him. He fixed the covers over his feet. After all, nothing else had managed yet.

* * *

 

 

Shiro’s eyes flutter open, the grit of sleep slowly falling away from his lashes. Something in the room was blinding and strangely warm.He winces, hand unconsciously raising to fend off the light spilling over his face in staggered slats.

He’s in a bed. A familiar bed. It smells wrong. Slowly, he realizes that he hasn’t left the artificial lights on again. The warmth causing him to squint is… sunlight.

He’s on Earth.

His heart skips a beat. The memories filter into him with a soundless crash. Shiro jars out of bed, movements jerky and discoordinated as much by panic as by the remnants of deep slumber. He’s halfway off the bed, and nearly fully tangled in the crumpled sheets, when the shrill beeping of his bracelets causes him to freeze.

There was something about the noise’s pattern. Two sharp, one long. _Oh_. He was overdue to take his morning medications… Shiro’s mouth twisted into a frown. Whatever those were.

He shut his eyes and collapsed back onto the mattress instead. Months of wanting nothing more than to wake up in his own bed and now that he was basically here…

Shiro let the noise wash over him, pointing his toes and flexing his fingers. Everything… ached. He’d almost forgotten the hollow ringing that tried to fill him up.

His calves pulled and threatened to cramp as he shook a particularly strong ache out of his foot. He didn’t miss this. His bones felt heavy, his head almost too solid for his neck.

Sunlight dapples through the lowered shades, swaying playfully in the air-conditioned breeze. He watched the rolling patterns for a few moments before deciding to bite the bullet and see what life had planned for him today. He rolls out of bed. It doesn’t take long to realize that none of his clothes made it into this room with him. Shiro finished tucking in the corners of the sheets and dropped Keith’s cadet uniform onto the neatened bed. That done, he shrugs out of his sleep shirt, opens the door and runs into Adam. Almost literally.

Adam recoils muzzily, still fighting off the allure of sleep. He’s already up but, comically, is dressed in sleep pants, non-matching socks, and his uniform jacket.

Shiro can’t quite help the smile that starts to pull at his lips. He’s not sure, but Adam’s black undershirt might actually be inside out. His hands are spinning Adam back into the bedroom before he’s fully aware of what he’s doing.

“Adam,” chuckle seeping into his sleep soft voice, “I think you forgot a few steps.”

Adam grumbled and trudged forward, moving with Shiro’s guiding hands as he shepherded the pair of them back into their bedroom.

The smell of their room washed over him. Nostalgic and comforting and achingly good. Shiro's eyes fluttered shut as he sat on the edge of Adam's side of the mattress. He pulled in a deep lungful, listening to Adam tap at the dresser, pull out two different drawers, grunt and stumble and struggle into his uniform pants. Even with his eyes closed, he could _see_ the near dance Adam was performing. Knew where he was just by how everything else sounded as he moved.

The rattle of picture frames on the main dresser, the _clunk_ of the bureau opening and closing; keys and ID badges rattling cheerfully against each other in the bowl atop. He remembered how they’d tried to keep them near the front door. Remembered two solid weeks of locking themselves out of their home, finding keys under pillows and beneath the bed, remembered Adam finally deciding to add clipping the keys to their pants every morning. Shiro opened his eyes, rubbing at the one or two tears that escaped. Maybe it was absurd but the sound of Adam’s routine just wasn’t… enough. Not today. Not with the memories of that impersonal mural still flashing behind his eyes. He sat on the bed, pillow clutched under his chin. He needed to hear Adam’s voice. The tap turned on. If Adam was by the sink he was already about as awake as he was going to get without an emergency. Shiro wracked his brain for any subject that wasn’t flying, or outer space, or aliens or Kerberos. Neutral ground.

“Hey, Adam?”

“Hmm?”

“How… how’s Keith been doing?” Shiro paused, wondering if he’d bothered to ask this the first time around. In the excitement of Kerberos, the heat of the argument with Adam…

A sigh echoed out from the bathroom.

“You know I don’t read that kid half as well as you do.” He caught sight of Shiro, still in pajamas, cuddling one of the pillows, and smiled helplessly. “I stand by what I said when you first showed up with him; he’s less of a foster kid and more of a stray cat.”

“Hey!” Shiro protested on Keith’s behalf, laugh escaping him anyway.

Adam clipped his keys and ID to his belt loops. “I’m just saying. He dislikes pretty much everything except for flying, you and chicken nugget day. And I’m not always so sure about the chicken nuggets.”

Shiro levered himself off the bed and stepped into the hallway behind Adam.

“He’s upset, Shiro. He isn’t eating, not with me at least. Won’t touch anything I’ve made either.” His tone suggested that he’d tried leaving food out. “You must have noticed he’s been heading to the cafeteria in the evenings. He’s back late, well,” Adam paused and pulled a slipping sock back up around his ankle, “When he comes back here at all.”

Adam sounded… disinterested wasn’t the right word. He was clearly _concerned_ … but he seemed almost detached. Like Keith’s future simply wasn’t something he could effect.

That was more than a little off-putting. He hadn’t realized how disconnected Keith and Adam were. Shiro’s mind skips over to that shack out in the desert. It had been stocked and lived in and he wonders what happened between the two after he - after Kerberos. Why did they fall apart from one another? How long did it take?

He shakes his head, as if that would let him toss the thoughts along with his hair, stepping forward into Adam’s space again. His fiance shoots him an amused glare but allows him to take one hand between his own two.

“We should get dinner. Just the two of us. Tomorrow!”

An idea forms, as he rubs misshapen circles into Adam’s knuckles. “A picnic like we used to!” He laughs, picturing it. “We can pretend to sneak out like cadets and duck around the security details! And I promise I won’t try and sneak my bracelets off.”

Adam closed his eyes, nodding tearfully as he squeezed Shiro’s hands back.

“I’d like that. But...” He peers at Shiro again. “Tomorrow won’t work.”

Shiro wonders how he’s ended up in freefall. Adam pulls his hand away.

“You have that dinner with Samuel Holt.”

His stomach falls towards his feet and shoots right back up again, this time for an entirely different reason. His right arm felt numb, fingers already tingling and dull.

_Matt and Pidge_.

The room started to tilt.

“Shiro,” Keith’s voice cut through the blur.

Their attention snapped to the young man near the front door. Adam leaned back, adjusting his glasses as he stepped away. He caught sight of the clock and grumbled.

“I’m going to be late.”

Then, the most wonderful thing happened.

Adam leant back in, kissed Shiro on his cheek and walked out the door. His absent-minded ' _Love you'_ grounding Shiro in the now unlike anything he’d tried before. Grey eyes blinked, sightless for a few moments. Something not unlike hope coiled shyly through him. The spot where Adam’s lips brushed his skin tingled.

Shiro looked up and nearly jolted.

Keith leaned on the doorway, staring at him, one strap of his bag loosely held in one hand. After a moment of fiddling with it he smiled, softer than any Shiro can recall seeing on him before.

“Seeing you two together… it’s nice.”

Keith shrugged in the face of Shiro’s confusion. “Wasn’t like I got to see much of… you know,” He trailed off again, face still set in that small smile, “People being domestic, _together_ , in love. Anywhere.”

‘Anywhere' encompassing not only the many school systems, foster cares and vast expanses of space the kid before him had seen.

He looked up at Shiro. “You and Adam were the first couple I ever... It’s rare. I almost forgot that it, you know, is possible.” Then, almost shyly, “for _anyone._ ”

Shiro felt his stomach dip. That was... a lot of pressure. He and Adam weren’t perfect. He wasn’t even really sure where they stood right now. For Keith of all people to look at them as some sort of... benchmark?

“...Keith,”

The half-human just smiled, this one a little brighter - a little more of his usual edge present, and grabbed the shoulder bag that held a strange mix of textbooks.

“I'm glad you get this, Shiro. He missed you, you know. Maybe…”

Keith broke off, as if he'd realized he'd revealed too much, and turned away. If it had been anyone else, Shiro would have said he fled out the door...

His monitors beeped instantly. Shiro hung his head, hopeless.

"Please stop."

* * *

 

He gets maybe halfway down the hall before Keith realizes he has _no idea_ where he’s going. He doesn’t know what classes he’s taking or even where they’d be. The once-again-teen stops dead, nearly sending a passing officer crashing into either him or the wall, and considers doubling back.

He scowls, realizing that odds were Adam would return to the suit long before Keith’s schedule would allow for him to be due back. He didn’t want to add any more stress to thing between Adam and Shiro so… He pushed his hands into his pockets, set his jaw mulishly and resumed walking.

Guess he’d just have to see where his feet took him today. 

* * *

 

Hours later, Shiro stared dismally at the burnt offering in the pan before him. He groaned and tossed it, settling on one of the bar stools with his head pressed to the counter. The door opened.

“Takashi?”

He turned into Adam’s concerned face. He reached down and pressed a wrist to Shiro’s forehead.

“Hmm... you don't feel warm. You alright?”

He braced himself and cocked a grin, “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

Brown eyes bored into his, and for the first time in what felt like years, Shiro felt his grin slip.

Adam pursed his lips.

“You don't have to do that.”

“...do what?”

“Push so hard, sometimes. I know…”

He took a breath. “I know you feel like you need to be, chasing down every minute of the day but sometimes…”

“I... Adam, that's-”

“Sometimes I worry. You don't stop for yourself. You can, you know. Just…”

Adam broke eye contact, and Shiro suddenly recalled that this was a rough subject between them. That Adam had always been demanding he stop, quit, give in and give up... Only... Only now... it sounded a lot more like he was asking him to _slow down_.

“Keith thinks we’re some kind of, of, ideal. I don't. I don't know how to explain that- that we-” It blurts out of him, chasing down and away from a realization that should have come years ago.

Adam drops his head and laughs, bangs brushing against Shiro’s own.

“I think that's the sweetest thing I've ever heard about that kid.”

“Hey!”

Adam paused and looked at Shiro, followed his eyes and refused to let him look away. He'd stared down armed galra with more ease than this man.

“We'll get through this.”

Shock rang through him like a bell. Adam must have heard it because he drew back, surprised.

“Did - Takashi, did you think we wouldn't?”

He gaped down at him, Shiro staring right back up. Adams jaw worked for a moment before he shook his head.

“I - Takashi. Short of you... You... I don't know, launching yourself into space? We'll find a way to make this work.”

“What? Even, even Kerberos?”

Adam drew back, clearly reluctant. He worried his lip.

“You... I've never seen you like you were last night. I just…”

He sighed, the weight of time Shiro couldn't accurately recall anymore pressing down on him.

“I just... Wanted you to _talk_ to me about it. I was terrified. Am. I am terrified. You take so much on, Takashi, and you never ask for help. Never stop. You're so strong. It's something I've admired about you since we were young but…” Brown eyes bore into grey.

“One of these days that's going to get you into trouble.”

Shiro looked away first. Adam rubbed the bridge of his nose then wrinkled it, “Did you try to cook something?”

“...no.”

His fiance shot him a sardonic look, clearly able to smell the smoke still hovering in the air.

“I thought we agreed you’d stop torturing the stove after the column incident.”

Shiro threw his hands in the air, “That omelette was fine!”

“The pan wasn’t.”

Shiro grumbles and returns to his glass of water. Adam smirked but decided to take pity on his fiance. He pulled a cold lunch out of the fridge and split half of it onto a plate which he pushed towards Shiro from the opposite side of the counter. They eat companionably in silence for a few minutes before Adam grumbles at the clock and shifts towards the door.

“Ah… going so soon?”

Adam straightened his glasses, “While you might use some of your _many and deserved_ leaves,” They don’t call them ‘sick days’, “ _I_ am going to be _late_.” He sighed, almost a growl. “I am never teaching again. Next time they ask, I’m gonna punt them right at you.”

Shiro smiled and took another bite, so in love his heart felt close to bursting. 

"And put your bracelets back on! Dr. Pim will have both our hides if you don't!" 

 His head thunked against the counter, disgruntled groan not earning him any sympathy from his lunch. 

* * *

 

Adam smiled to himself as the door shut behind him. They were going to be OK.

He’d thought… well, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d thought when he’d caught the love his life and the half-feral child said love had dragged home one summer wrestling on the floorboards - but after the Kerberos Fall Out nothing seemed right.

It felt like he’d been watching his world slip out from beneath his feet for weeks now. Finding solid ground unexpectedly was… He almost didn’t want to look this gift horse in the mouth. Almost. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Takashi that rattled. That desperate. Something, whatever it might have been, had shaken him last night.

He thought maybe something was deeply wrong, but after today... maybe Takashi had just finally decided to give his body the rest it needed. He hadn’t paced for the first time since their fight. Hadn’t hidden his bracers somewhere in the apartment or taken off mid-sentence to go for a joyride. Granted the man had already imbibed more tea than was strictly allowed by his dietician, if the four tea bags in the trash were anything to go by, but Adam had never really been on board with depriving people of their small comforts. Especially ones that didn’t involve challenging gravity or heavy machinery (like Adam _wouldn’t_ find out that Shiro was teaching the kid that trick off the cliffs).

He rubbed his arms against a sudden chill, halfway to the forsaken lecture hall he’d been assigned, wondering what might have caused the sudden change of mind. Maybe a dream. After all, they all had nightmares from time to time. 

* * *

 

Four hours and three randomly selected classrooms later, Keith is seriously considering just dropping out on his own. None of this matters - who cares what his grades were when he’s going to dismantle a galactic empire and pilot one of the greatest weapons in the known galaxy?

He sighs and dutifully drops into yet another random seat. Despite the obvious military regiment, he’s yet to be called out for being in the wrong classes. Keith idly wondered at the lax security. Then again, the whole place felt… wound up. Everyone seemed to be stressed and just a little scared. He scans the faces coming through the door out of habit, not expecting anything different from the other hour and change long waste of time he’d been through already.

_Tired. Hungry. Bored. Thinking about something else already. Stressed. Thinks they don’t have to be here. Angry? Tired. Tired. Sad? Nerv-wait._

The teacher walked in and tried to call the still settling class to order. Same as the last three classes, Keith doesn’t pay any mind as the professor starts to set up the day’s agenda. His eyes are stuck on the familiar yellow headband. He follows it down to meet a pair of brown eyes. They locked gazes and Keith blinks as the Samoan boy paled a whole shade lighter before staggering away from his desk.

He scowled. What had that been about? He followed Hunk’s jerky progress to a desk near the opposite side of the room. The professor rapped the board a few times and launched right into the lecture. None of them, he absently notes, have taken attendance. He thought he remembered that being a thing. Or, well, an issue someone had eventually snitched to Shiro about. He has a vague recollection of a lecture. The professor was still talking.

Keith drummed his fingers quietly against his bare desk, not noticing how the students around him leaned subtly away. His eyes locked with Hunk’s again as the other boy nervously looked over his shoulder. He flinched and spun back towards the board. Keith sighed.

This was going to be a long lecture.

* * *

 

The bell _finally_ rang. Keith watched the others file out after the professor peripherally, gaze locked on the sweating boy opposite him.

Hunk made to gather his things but flinched back into his seat as Keith stood and approached him. The other students part around him as they head towards the door. Some consciously, others simply in the same strange hurry as everyone else he’s seen today. Hunk stares at his desk, sweat gathering along his brow.

“Hey.”

Brown eyes dart up to look at him and then immediately dart back down.

Keith’s eyes narrow in confusion. What happened to Voltron’s rock, their strongest leg? Where was the boy who apparently called galra to action in the face of panic? Who kept them all together through the darkness of space? Who chased away the madness in their own hearts? 

And speaking of panic, Hunk was shaking, his chest heaving in choppy waves as he struggled for air. He was afraid.

Keith felt surprise attempt to chase thought out of his own head, he pushed through it and crouched down near Hunk’s chair, trying to keep eye contact with the other.

“Hey… _Hey!_ ” Brown eyes were nearly black. “Look, Hunk, hey, look at me.” They roved over the room, his hands, his bag, darting towards Keith before glancing away again. Hunk’s breathing worsened, a low wheeze starting to whistle through him.

“Hunk, come on, what’s-” It dawns on Keith that Hunk is afraid of _him_.

Ice runs down his spine, stomach hollow and clawing at the rest of his organs. He rocks back, away from Hunk, to rest on his heels. That… that was. Well, frankly, a personal fear he thought he’d left long behind him. Staring into Hunk’s dilated pupils and watching his shaking hands Keith realized maybe it had never gone away at all. Maybe he’d just… outpaced it. Again.

He took a deep breath. This wasn’t helping anyone, least of all Hunk.

He hesitantly reaches forward, palms open, soft, barely touching the orange sleeves of Hunks uniform. He keeps the rest of him as far away as possible. Hunk trembled under his hands, desk and chair starting to rattle against the tiled floor.

The door swung open. Keith looked up and glared. The officer backed out of the room, door closing quietly behind them.  

A strangled whimper snapped his attention back to his friend. Shortness of breath, dilated pupils, shaking hands, sweating… Uh, um, oh. Oh god, this was a panic attack, wasn’t it?

He was not equipped for this.

He’d seen Shiro in an attack once or twice but that was less fear and more… broken rage? More Traumatic than just Stress.

He wracked his brains for what he could remember of Hunk outside of battle. Somehow he didn’t think puns or food or engine parts would help. He cast a glance around the empty classroom. Besides, it wasn’t like he had either of the latter here. And, well, he’d never considered himself funny. Keith took a breath and steeled his nerves.

“Do you... do you, want a hug?”

Hunk nods, jerkily, almost frantic.

Keith shuffles forward, reaching awkwardly around the chair. His discomfort is… secondary, here. He remembered the first hug Hunk had swept them up in, how Keith couldn’t believe he’d been included in the embrace intentionally. Sure that it’d been an accident. Sure that it had to be an outside influence; exhaustion, fear, g-forces. Outside of Shiro, and occasionally Adam, it was one of the first hugs he could remember. He swaddled that feeling in his chest, let it build, tried to siphon it out through his arms and into Hunk. He closes his eyes and focuses on that emotion, the warm buzz of trust and welcome, focus on the thought that the kid struggling for breath against panic is his friend. His fellow paladin. But most importantly it’s _Hunk_. Kind, empathetic, goofy, supportive, intelligent _Hunk_.

Something splinters in his chest, breaks apart. That crushed glass sensation echoes through him again.

A large gasp of air rings in his ears. “Keith!?”

Deceptively strong arms wrap back around him, crushing him down into Hunk’s sudden embrace and squeezing the air out him in one movement. Well, at least Hunk was breathing again. Keith stared at what he could see of the other boy. Unhelpfully, that amounted to mostly dark hair and an ear.

“Hunk… Hunk, buddy,” He wheezed, “I can’t-” Hunk sucked in another loud breath and shoved Keith out to arms length. He still looked to be very much in the grips of panic… or, maybe, Keith considered somewhat guiltily as he heaved in necessary air, he was in the middle of a new one for a whole slew of new reasons. Space hadn’t exactly been… peaceful. Still, Hunk seemed to be managing this far better than the prior attack. Practice, Keith assumed.

He looked away, not sure he’d done the right thing.

“K-Keith?”

“Yeah.”

“We…” Hunk trails off, still gulping in air as he looks around at the room “We’re… in the Garrison? We’re on Earth?!”

“Yeah.”

“I - we - thi-this is Professor Dos Santos' room. This is Systems Four.”

Well, at least he was breathing again. Hunk looked back at Keith, confusion plain across his face. “You weren’t in this class.”

How the hell could Hunk remember that? It’d been nearly two years! Besides which, “That’s what you have a problem with?”

Hunk blinks back at him before the penny drops along with his hands. “Oh my gosh! We’re at the Garrison! We’re on Earth!”

Keith can’t help the laugh that burbles out of him, “Yeah. Yeah we are.”

“Who else is here? I mean, are we all here? Is here actually here? Did that really just-”

“Hunk, _Hunk!_ ” The Yellow Paladin trailed off, grinning in embarrassment. Keith smiled back, “I thought it was just me and Shiro. Haven’t found anyone else yet but…” He took a deep breath. “I’m pretty sure we’re in the past.”

“Okay.”

Keith blinked, not expecting it to go over that well. “Seriously?”

Hunk shrugged, “After everything else? Mermaids, parallel universes, and empires that don’t understand the perfect avatars of utility known as sporks? Pidge and I had a bet to see when time travel would pop up. She argued that your whole thing with the whale counted, but clearly that was just Relativity in action.”

Keith shook his head, still not sure what to call his trip on Space Whale but certian he couldn't classify it the way Hunk or Pidge could. “Come on, I’m pretty sure there’s supposed to be class in here.”

Hunk looked pointedly around at the very empty room. Keith glanced back at the closed door, a little guilty, a little pleased and a little embarrassed now that the moment had passed.

“I might have… glared an officer back into the hallway?”

Hunk, for some reason, didn’t seem too surprised by this feat.

“Yeah, well, I can’t blame him. Regular Keith is scarier than Galra Keith.”

“What?”

A bell rang, covering over Hunk’s laughter.

The taller cadet gasped and jerked to his feet. “I have a class!”

“What.”

Hunk looked at Keith apologetically, “I - it’s - finals - Keith, I have another class. I have to go!”

“How the hell do you remember your schedule?”

"You don't?"

"No."

"Well that explains what you were doing in an Engineering class."

"Hunk. Focus."

"Right! Right - no, sorry, I really do have a class!"

"Hunk!"

"I'll meet up with you later!"

“Get back here!”

* * *

 

Shiro begrudgingly sipped at his glass of water, displeased with the aches pulsing through him.

“I can’t believe you overdid it at the gym.”

He slumped into the cushions as Adam continued, the sounds of aggressive stirring bouncing off the walls.

“After you ‘forgot’,” he paused to make finger quotes, a bit of curry slipping off the wooden spoon to splatter over his t-shirt, “to take your medicine all day. What did you think was going to happen?”

Shiro rubbed at his right arm, _Nothing. I didn’t think anything was going to happen. I should have been fine._

The door slams open with a _bang,_  chasing out Shiro’s thoughts as he startles to his aching feet.

Keith stomps into the room and throws his bag down near the couch. He eyes Shiro’s spooked stance before wincing apologetically for the noise. The older shakes his head, no harm done, and eases back down on the couch. He hopes Adam hadn’t noticed.

“Everyone seems really on edge, what's going on?”

Shiro shrugs, but can’t deny the observation.

Adam doesn't bother to turn around, just yells out from the kitchen. "It's FINALS." The stirring stopped. "Takashi, remind the kid that he still has to keep his grades up!"

Keith's brow wrinkled, "What does it matter? I'm going to-"

Shiro waved his hands frantically, cutting Keith off. Purple-eyes widened as he tried to finish his sentence with anything _other_ than Voltron or the intergalactic space war churning towards them.  

"-f-fly anyway. I don't need to pass, uh, history for that."

A cautious knock sounds near the door, sparing the pair of them Adam’s retort. Keith jerks as though someone's jabbed him.

He casts a guilty look at Shiro.

"Oh! UH... I kind of. Invited someone to dinner?"

Shiro leaned back, wondering who had replaced his brother when he wasn't looking. Keith waved his hands in a complicated pattern silently for a moment before stopping as Adam walked over towards the door and living room.

Adam stared at Shiro over Keith's head. Brown and purple eyes both asking him silent questions he didn't understand or have answers to.

Adam sighed and, like the lone adult he is, opens the door.

"Hello?"

"Oh! Uh... I just. I must, uh, have the wrong room. I’m so sorry si-"

"Hunk!"

Shiro sat up straight again as Keith turned and shoved into the doorway. Adam grumbled good-naturedly and ruffled Keith's hair as he was forced a step back into the apartment.

"C'mon. Adam's started dinner. Shiro says he can help us with our... Project."

“Uh huh.” Adam turned and walked back to the stove.

There was a bit of awkward muttering in the living room. Kid was probably struggling to work out what to call Takashi if Keith’s sudden and unsubtle “Just call him Shiro.” was anything to go by. He wondered what sort of final project still needed tweaking this late into finals?

The large pan had started to simmer, little bubbles dancing near the edges of the pan. Adam breathed in the steam, savouring the heat and scent for a moment before getting back to the work before him. Right, now he just needed to-

“Is that a guajillo paste?”

Adam jumped, the tan kid suddenly half under his elbow.

“Uh. Yes. It’s curry.”

“Oh, man, this smells amazing.” True to his words, the kid took a deep breath in and nearly melted then and there before the stove. Halfway to the dials though, his head tilted to the side and he lunged for the cutting board. Adam backed a few careful feet away, eyeing the glint of the knife as it made short work of the vegetables he’d lined up.

“Keith,” He called over his shoulder. “Who is this kid and why is he taking over our kitchen?”

Keith looked up from his bag, “That’s Hunk. Hunk, Adam.”

This did not answer any of his questions.

Adam peered at Keith curiously, wondering where the paranoid stray had gone. Keith couldn’t stand having strangers (or even acquaintances) in the apartment. Usually following their every move and lurking in blind spots or around corners. He looked back in time to see the cadet stir the pan with one hand while the other measured out another portion of spice. Not only was Keith not dogging the kid’s shadow, but he was also letting him at the communal pot.

Takashi using one of his leave days, Keith bringing (apparently) a friend back to the apartment… Adam threw up his hands and crashed next to Shiro on the couch. He was officially in wonderland. (He might as well enjoy the madness.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keith, on the roof: Where the fuck is my classroom?
> 
> Shiro gets a cup of tea because that poor man has been through the wringer. It’s decaf, of course, because Adam is the leader of the KEEP SHIRO HEALTHY brigade and caffeine is one of those generally restricted things for the ill, but after those years in space without; Shiro will take what he can get. Goodness knows I need several to get through s7. 
> 
> Hunk is referencing the Time Dilation part of the Theory of Relativity.


	3. Dinner and a Show

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here have some Adam Angst, Hunk Speculation and the seriously belated realization that nothing can ever, EVER, get done without Katie Holt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so late guys! We had some technical difficulties but are recovering!  
> Thank you so much for your patience and kind reviews they really make my days!

Dinner was delicious.

Despite Hunk’s nerves pre-serving, which honestly you’d think the nerves would have hit _before_ he accidentally threw Adam out of his own kitchen but apparently not, the curry was a hit.

Keith, as was his usual MO with food, dove into his bowl with such vigor that Hunk was always shocked he didn’t spill. Shiro, in contrast, seemed to be savoring everything one bite at a time. Hunk could relate. He’d had a moment right in the middle of the mess hall. If Keith hadn’t snagged him by his collar he may very well have jumped the counter and gotten court marshalled for disrupting the kitchen. He took another bite of curry but almost choked as Shiro suddenly jolted in his seat. His hands twitched for a bayard that just wasn’t there ( _wasn’t it like, a bazillion light years away? How far was Earth from Arus? Lance would know. He’d have to ask.)_ almost rocking out of his chair himself.

Keith, though he flinched and scooted closer to the arm of the long sofa, didn’t seem concerned. Maybe it was a little weird to use Keith as a Shiro-Barometer, but it hadn’t failed them yet.

Well, until Keith had left them alone with something that hadn’t really been Shiro in the first place. That hadn’t gone too well. But it hadn’t been anyone's fault, really excep- Hunk let his spoon clink gently into the bowl as Shiro jerked _again_. This time he caught the exasperated look on Adam’s (Professor Wright?) face.

Shiro clutched his bowl protectively, arms raised slightly above Keith’s sitting eye level, and shot Adam a wounded look. Adam didn’t move a muscle but whatever Shiro saw there had him guiltily turning back to Hunk. The Black Paladin(?), gosh that was confusing with Keith and Shiro next to each other he’ll have to ask eventually, smiled at Hunk. Given the state of their apartment (which, _what_ . How could he _not have known about this_.) the Yellow-Paladin-currently-Cadet figured he could forgive Shiro for the fact that the smile went sappy and shifted back to Professor Wright (should he actually call him Adam? Adults were so weird about things like-).

“Thanks for the meal!”

Adam sighed, unaware of the fond glances Shiro was still shooting his way, and patted gently at Hunk’s arm. “Please forgive him, they don’t usually let him go anywhere without his cue-cards.” Keith choked a laugh into his bowl while Hunk just choked. Adam continued on, “This was great, definitely the best surprise to walk through our door in a long time.”

Keith’s head snapped up, his mildly insulted “Hey!” shushed as Adam continued, “You’ll have to let me know what you changed in the recipe.”

Hunk’s eyes flitted across to Shiro before deciding discretion was the better part of politeness and shoved a spoonful of curry into his mouth to drown the building giggles. He nodded, shoulders shaking, and was glad when Adam’s attention shifted over his head.

Hunk turned in his seat and did his best to not be surprised that Keith was, somehow, halfway to the kitchen.

 _How did I not see him-?_ And then gave the thought up. It was Keith. They all knew he was a sneaky-part-galra-ninja.

Adam didn’t seem impressed, at least. He just raised his eyebrows and pinched his lips and oh, wow, that was _such_ a parent-face.

He didn’t even say anything and Keith’s shoulders hunched defensively.

Keith flipped his empty bowl towards them, “I’m _showing_ my appreciation.”

Hunk’s eyebrows nearly hid behind his headband. This was a night of firsts. He can’t recall Keith ever sounding like that. It was… it was nice. Normal. A little snarky, a little whiny. He sounded like the snippets Hunk had heard of Lance’s Rachel. Like Hunk’s little cousins; caught but not really in trouble.

“By getting seconds?”

Keith swooped around the pillar and into the kitchen proper, “Exactly.”

Adam grabbed his and Shiro’s bowls, pushing them over the counter towards Keith, “Without asking anyone else?”

A grumble echoed out of the kitchen and fell on Hunk’s amazed ears. The clang of plastic on ceramic followed shortly after, Keith grumpily filling Shiro and Adam’s, in that order, bowls before his own.

Adam reached over the fat counter and ruffled Keith’s hair with his fingertips, laughing good-naturedly as the boy stepped back and out of his range after a few seconds.

( _How has Hunk never heard about this guy? Where have he and his Keith wrangling skills been all this time?)_

“Thank you, Keith.”

“You’re welcome, Adam.”

It was almost singsonged. Rehearsed. A call and answer phrase that they did almost unconsciously. Adam almost-smug and overly-happy, Keith grumpy-amused and something in his heart panged because… Hunk shuddered and looked down into his empty bowl of earth-food goodness, suddenly not sure he could stomach the besotted looks painting across both officers’ faces as Adam handed Shiro his bowl of seconds.

His stomach roiled, memories of that empty weather-beaten hut setting walls up in his mind. He’d been over every inch of it. It hadn’t taken long, small shack and all, but what he’d found hadn’t been the problem. It’s what he _hadn't_ found that’d made him worry then and caused his stomach to do a poor impression of Lance’s tumbling now. The shack had been utterly devoid of photos or mementos. Nothing remained of this bizarrely comfortable family scene he’d wandered into. It’d been as barren and dry as the desert and he’d stuck his head into Pidge’s diary just to escape the bleak horror of it.

He wrapped his arms around his middle in the here and now.

He’d stuck his head down and away and never thought on it again.

“Are you alright?”

Keith looked up out of his third bowl, wincing a little. “Hunk’s got a weak stomach.”

“It’s just stress. You know,” Hunk squeezed his own sides, forcing the lie out like toothpaste, “Finals.”

For some reason that made Adam shoot another parent-face at Keith, who ignored him completely, before turning soft eyes on Hunk.

“There’s a bathroom down the hall, first door on the right.”

Hunk nodded and pushed the chair back, leaving his bowl on the coffee table. As he hit the small hallway he could have sworn he heard a muffled swat.

“No. You’re done. ... _Yes_ , I’m serious. You’re going to upset your stomach too.”

He padded down the hall, the gentle bickering of _family_ starting up behind him, determined to figure out what they’d all been missing.

* * *

Hunk sighed.

Keith’s bedroom was almost as depressing as the desert shack.

Bare walls, a closet full of uniforms and all of three framed photos, none of which, Hunk decided after a moment, had been placed or picked by Keith.

The coiling in his gut hadn’t loosened a jot. The hall _bathroom_ had told him more.

Mostly that Lance would flip if he ever became aware of what Keith was using to wash his hair (a 2-in-1? For shame, Keith. Even Pidge likely knew better). The metal nail-file and chunky clippers had been a shock. Especially given how shiny and new and completely scratched up along the edges both were. Galra genes had to go somewhere, Hunk guessed and then suppressed a snort as he remembered the lone, battered-flat toothbrush that _had_ to be Keith’s. They went a lot of somewheres, he amended, but interior decorating hadn’t been one of those places. There was _nothing_ in here for Hunk to get a read on.

He sighed through his nose and tiptoed out the door, not-quite closing it gently behind him. The taped list of names and scores fluttered silently into view of the empty room as the door swung away from the wall, unseen and unnoticed as Hunk padded across the hallway.

He turned the knob as quietly as possible.

Now _this_ was a bedroom.

Organized clutter, knick-knacks, and signs of things moved around during a busy week. Personal touches that just sang _Adam!_ or _Shiro!_ and the little things in between that had obviously been selected by them together.

Like the pill caddies and gently glowing calendar on the tiled wall of the bathroom. The electronic scale on the floor and the long row of bath-and-shower supplies that rivaled Lance’s collection. Hunk rubbed his palms soothingly as he stood in the quiet of the master bedroom proper, breathing deep and trying to keep the chemical names in his head despite the ringing panic. Maybe for Pidge, she’d likely have ideas. Maybe for Coran to recreate or for Lance to explain in layman's terms. Hunk smiled a little, Lance’s random knowledge of medicine always helpful. He blamed it on Lisa’s MCATs and later exams but Hunk knew better. Still… one of them would need to know, so he did his best to press the labels into his memory. It didn’t seem likely that Shiro would tell them. He sure hadn’t _before_.

The thought soured his recovering stomach. Adam and Shiro’s room, because it was clearly _their_ room, had been so refreshingly normal. Hunk was half disappointed. But then, it was really nice to see something, he guessed, healthy? after the scare that was Keith’s spartan room. It made it pretty clear that whatever was going on, Keith was likely keeping it up by choice and not… His stomach rolled again, remember the low wavelengths of tension still coiling around the apartment. Remembering again that empty, lonely four-walled hut in the middle of the _desert_.

A hand pressed down on his shoulder.

He jumped halfway to Arus before realizing it was only Adam. _Whew_.

Hunk paused. Ran that data back through his brain again.

 _Uh…_ quiznack _._

Long fingers dug into him and Hunk turned to look nervously up at the officer holding him. Adam’s glasses flashed in the low light as he adjusted them.

Hunk swallowed preemptively, bracing himself for anger, outrage, disgust. He _knew_ this, snooping, was a nasty habit but...

“Thank you for looking after Keith.”

Hunk froze, uncertain ground feeling significantly more treacherous.

Did Adam _know_? Keith hadn’t mentioned anyone but Shiro… which, okay, par for the course with the guy but still you’d think that-

“I’m not sure I want to know how you two met, it’s probably best if I don’t,” Adam gave Hunk a look that reminded him, oddly, of Lance. It was the ‘If-I-don’t-know-I-can’t-get-you-in-trouble-look”. What did Lance call it? Plausible Deniability! That was it!

“But... _thank you_. Keith has been…” Adam worried at the photo on the dresser, tired and relieved and sad all at once. “It’s been. Rough. Especially on him.”

The officer slid his fingers off the frame. “I worried when he stopped eating here… I’m glad you were there for him. He can be such a handful.” Adam’s huffed laugh dropped like a stone in Hunk’s stomach.

He hadn’t been there for Keith. Not this time and not the last.

He lets the story of what could have been, what never was and never would be, run like a reel of film in his mind as they stood there in mutually somber silence.

Lance would badger him out of bed at some forsaken hour, demanding cookies or food or just a dare in the night to see if they could. They’d sneak into the kitchens and freeze, bodies balanced on too-squeaky feet, outside the doors, shocked into silent heart-attacks when they find the lights already on. Hunk’s stomach would clench and Lance’s eyes would go all small and crazy and they’d be sure they’re going to get caught as the smell of something burnt wafts under the closed doors.

Hunk knew he’d be torn between wanting to know who was in the off-limits kitchen late at night and wanting to get the hell out of the danger zone before they were written up. Lance, he thinks, would peek through the circular windows and then bash the doors open. Because he’d see Keith and that would just about be the end of their peaceful night.

Hunk huffed a laugh of his own, “Yeah, I guess…”

Because in the warm glow of the kitchen in Hunk’s mind, Keith would shout quietly back at Lance, maybe be halfway to fleeing himself. But it was Hunk’s daydream and Hunk’s mind so Keith _wouldn’t_ leave them and Hunk would offer to share their feast once he made it and maybe Lance would fall into that weird and quiet place he went sometimes. Where his voice went all low and soft and he pulled and unravelled people like computer wires and the threads of his knitting. And Keith would stay. And they’d be friends before anything _crazy_ happened, bonded by cookies and family and the threat of detention instead of Alien-Destiny or Mutual Death and Destruction of the Galaxy.

A warm arm tugs him against Adam’s side. Hunk goes willingly, quietly abandoning his quest for information in favor of the strong embrace guiding him down the hall.

They did each other the favor of pretending not to hear any sniffles.

* * *

Keith pushes Shiro’s bowl across the island having finally wrestled it away from the older man. How had he not known about Shiro’s dietary restrictions?

The requests for Keith to order at the cafeteria and the squirreled away lunches in the bike’s holds start to make a little more sense.

“Food _everywhere_ and I’m not allowed to eat it.”

Keith turned back around, comment on the tip of his tongue, _I’m not your junk-food mule_ , only to lock eyes with Adam and a sheepish Hunk.

The officer ferried Hunk back into the room proper and shot Keith a pointed look. _Control your friend,_ that gaze ordered.

He blinked and shrugged. Not sure why Adam was not-glaring at him in the first place. He’s  _responsible_ _for Hunk_ , sure, but he’s not responsible _for Hunk_. That would just be unfair. Trying to stop Hunk from snooping would be like stopping Pidge from latching onto new tech. Futile and ugly for everyone involved.

Adam threw his hands up and walked over to lean next to the couch.

Shiro caught Hunk looking nervously at his empty bowl on the table and eased it out of the Yellow Paladin’s hands.

“I’ll do the dishes.”

Keith sighed and slid over the top of the counter towards the sink, grabbing the drying rack off the wall along with a towel. Shiro washing meant he’d been volunteered onto drying duty.

“Hunk don’t get up.”

Shiro blinked as Keith fired the order off without looking over into the living room. Hunk froze, half out of his seat, and exchanged a confused glance with Shiro before slowly sitting down.

Adam laughed, soft and under his breath and once again Hunk wondered, desperately, how they’d met. Where this guy, who kicked at Shiro’s ankles and ribbed him mercilessly and worried after his health with a ferocity that Keith had clearly inherited _somehow_ , had gone.

 _Why wasn’t he_ there _? Where was he?_

The thought turned, jagged and rough, over and over in his mind until he had to push it away.

It was only hurting him right now.

* * *

They sat around the coffee table, Keith and, surprisingly, Adam eventually owning up to the many stories that comprised the table’s damaged surface. Shiro patted and rubbed at the many dents, scratches, and swaths of scorch marks fondly as the pair regaled Hunk with feats he was certain broke at least a dozen dormitory rules, officer’s quarters or not. The one with the fire, the pie, and the armadillo was possibly just illegal flat out.

Eventually, Adam stands, stretches and bids Hunk a goodnight on some unseen cue. The three of them watch him pad down the hallway, guiltily looking away as he peered back at them before stepping through to his room.

Adam’s door swings shut, leaving the three of them in tense silence. Hunk struggles beneath its yoke.

“So, uh… Adam, huh?”

The silence grows heavier, not like a fat cat given fifths but like a weight held over one’s head by shaking arms.

“How come you guys never mentioned him?”

Shiro stared at the coffee table’s dented edge. “It wasn’t relevant to-”

“‘Cause I mean, it seems like this is a long time thing. Like, a long, long time.”

“It-”

“I mean, there’s a photo there with you as a _cadet_ -”

“Hunk-”

“And I just don’t get why-”

“ _Enough!_ ”

Hunk shrinks in on himself, fingers curling around a weapon that wasn’t there.

Shiro’s jaw clicked shut, his eyes following a beat after. Fingers press over where a scar should have been but wasn’t.

It hadn’t been a shout. He hadn’t raised his voice like the clone but… something hard inside Hunk loosened as Shiro spread his empty palms, _both of them_ , over his kneecaps with a gusty sigh.

“I’m sorry. That was,” He wasn’t looking at Hunk. Or Keith. “Unnecessary. It’s a bit of a rough subject.”

Hunk swallowed, apology on his lips. Shiro raised one hand gently between them, stopping him.

“You didn’t know.” Grey eyes look up and then away again. “I didn’t tell you.”

Shiro took a deep breath, grateful as the boys allowed him to change the subject. They needed to assess what they knew. Compare their facts and see if they couldn’t weed out any extraneous possibilities. The looming horror that this was all one of the witches’ traps lurked in the back of Shiro’s mind. There would be no moving forward until they at least knew what was after them this venture.

The officer started, “We nee-”

“Hunk, what are you thinking.”  
  
Shiro blinked as Keith cut across him, gaze narrowed on the, now that he was looking at him, fidgeting engineer.

Hunk winces under their combined scrutiny and, after a moment, Shiro leans back in his seat. Carefully sliding the weight of his gaze a little to the left of the boy. He watches Hunk straighten from the corner of his eye, apparently more comfortable addressing Keith. He turns the thought over in his mind as the halfling slowly, awkwardly, draws Hunk out of his shell.

Keith had, sometime when he wasn’t looking, grown into quite the leader. Someone Hunk, admittedly the most emotionally gentle of the Paladins, felt comfortable turning towards - even over Shiro himself. He finds that he isn’t insulted, just surprised. He’s proud. A little concerned that _he_ didn’t notice Hunk had something to contribute. That Hunk was looking to Keith first, rather than him... A part of him ached that he failed the Yellow Paladin, somehow at some point.  
But another part was _proud_ at how Keith had grown. That someone would look to the, alright Adam, feral picky stray he’d pried out of a stolen car was just… he guessed this feeling was why some Garrison officers were always sneaking photos of their kids into the base offices and shuttles. Huh.

“So, Keith is the only one capable of Reminding people? He’s the one who brought us both back, right?”

Shiro blinked, “Reminding?”

Hunk nodded, “Right. Of the future? Or maybe our past life?”

He paused and started flicking his fingers, shaking one or two occasionally. Shiro was tempted to find the boy a pad and stylus just to see what would come out of the engineer’s brain right now. Except -

 _Except_.

Shiro’s brain stuttered, stopped, and ground over a possibility.

He’d assumed because he couldn’t ‘remind’ Adam that the other simply wasn’t capable of remembering. Because it wasn’t meant to be. Because the universe was kind enough to spare Adam the memory of what-might-have-been but cruel enough to leave him plagued by it. Maybe it simply wasn’t possible because, Shiro held the painful truth close to his chest, Adam had _died_. Because Shiro hadn’t been there.

But if Hunk was _right_ \- His head snapped towards Keith.

Keith shifted minutely backwards, not quite a flinch, right hand closing unconsciously over his dagger’s hilt. The teenager shook his head, not meeting Shiro’s expectant gaze.

“I don’t know.”

Keith bit his lip, avoiding the look he _knew_ would be spreading across Shiro’s unscarred face. Reaching out for Shiro, for Hunk, had been… A phantom ache stirs in his chest.

Painful, but somehow _right_. Pushing through the pain for them was worth it. More than that, it felt like what he was _meant_ to do. What he was good at, what was he good _for_ if not saving his friends?

Adam… Keith’s ears rang with phantom shouts. Harsh words and ugly truths and the suffocating sense that Keith just _didn’t belong_. He would break himself to pieces to keep Shiro (and Hunk and Pidge and Allura and Lance) safe. It wasn’t poetry or prose, it was _fact_. He would rather die than lose them, any of them

He wasn’t sure that was true for Adam.

He didn’t know how to… explain that to Shiro, though. Wasn’t sure he was willing to risk failing, risk dimming the newfound light in the other’s eyes, either. So he kept his eyes on Hunk, needing that off-the-wall genius he’d come to expect from the Yellow-Green duo to distract all of them.

“What do we know?”

“We’re not dead?” Hunk posited without pause. He raised a fist to his chin and wondered. “I mean, I guess we could be dead. I mean, what is death anyways? The end of something? I mean we’re at the Garrison and technically that was all of our beginnings so that makes it sort of the opposite and-”

“Hunk,”

“-then there’s the whole ‘surrounded by loved ones’ angle which I guess you’ve got going strong,”

Shiro and Keith groaned at Hunk’s dig for information. Shiro rallied, still trying to pin Keith with an almost frantic look in his eyes. “Keith you could-”

“-but man I have not seen my cousins anywhere and let me tell you I once let them eat the last bit of sticky rice over break and if that isn’t love-”

“We’re not dead!” Keith snarled, more than done with this line of thought.

Hunk tapped his pointer fingers against each other.

Keith slowly sat back down.

“We’re at the Garrison. Kerberos hasn’t happened, from what I can guess it’s due for launch in a few months.”

Shiro looked at the two young men sat before him and sighed, visibly tabling his end of the conversation (Keith grimaced, knowing it was far from over). “Assuming that this is actually Earth and not some sort of shared hallucination.”

Keith and Hunk grimaced at one another, Shiro did them the favor of pretending he hadn’t seen it, instead jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. “Last I remember, I was in the Atlas. Nothing unusual happened on my end. No explosions, no flashes of light, nothing. Next thing I know Keith’s half a foot shorter and trying to strangle me in the hallway.”

Hunk’s eyes slid towards Keith, unsubtly trying to gauge just _how much_ shorter the Black Paladin now was compared to his twenty year old, past? future?, self. Purple eyes narrowed dangerously and Hunk wisely directed his gaze towards the ceiling, the picture of innocence.

Shiro snapped his fingers, looking a little too pleased to be able to do so with his right hand, between them.

“Focus. We need to figure out who, or what, sent us…” He looked around what, for all intents and purposes, continued to resemble his living room “...here.”

Keith transferred his glare unto an imaginary enemy, “The Galra.”

Shiro nodded slowly, “Could be some of the scattered druids. Kolivan mentioned they were still active.”

Keith scowled and crossed his arms, ever the devil’s advocate, “Alternatively we could _actually_ be on Eart-”

“Or maybe we’re trapped in another twisted sort of game show, except this time we’re just being held in stasis as they drain away our life force and leave us as broken husks to be consumed by multi-dimensional being for some weirdo’s viewing pleasure!”

Keith and Shiro exchanged glances as Hunk pulled in lungfuls of air.

“Um,” Keith leaned forward and patted Hunk’s raised arm exactly twice, “I’m… sure that’s not it.”

Hunk’s head fell forward with a relieved sigh. “Oh good. That’d be terrible.”

Shiro narrows his eyes at Keith, expression eerily close to Adam’s earlier the evening. Once again, Keith shrugged. He was _not responsible_ for Hunk. That wasn’t going to happen.

Shiro ran a hand through his hair. Keith squinted. Were those… he cast his eyes to the side and caught Hunk’s gaze. Wide eyes met and mutually, silently, vowed _not_ to mention the small white hairs speckling Shiro’s forehead.

“So. We know _when_ we are, and as far as I can tell we all agree on _where_ we are-” he held up a hand to halt the boy’s wildly differing speculations, “ _As far as we can all ascertain_.” They shrunk back into their respective seats.

“The only left is the ‘why’ then…”  
  
Keith scowled, “Allura, maybe?”

She’d been spending a great deal of time in the lower levels of the Garrison’s tech department.

It was possible she’d uncovered something. Either accidentally or more than their enemies would have wanted them too. Keith wouldn’t put it past them to still somehow be spying on Voltron.

Hunk blinked, “You think Allura sent us back somehow?”

Well, that hadn’t been at all what Keith’d meant but… It was nice, in a way, just how innocently positive Hunk was. Wild speculations aside. Of the three of them, he seemed the most convinced that this wasn’t some sort of concocted hellscape designed to drive them mad.

His instincts agreed, had told him from the moment he woke up that there was no danger here, but, well. His instincts had a habit of getting other people into trouble. It wasn’t something he was willing to risk. Not anymore.

 _Assuming,_ said the nagging paranoid voice in the back of his brain, _that they’re real._

“Huh.”

“What is it?”

Hunk tucked a finger under his own chin, thoughtful. “If we really are when we think we are and _where_ we think we are… Pidge should still be, well,”

Shiro made a small noise of understanding, “Katie Holt.”

Hunk nodded. “No offense guys, but I think we’re gonna need-”

“It’ll be a good test,” Shiro added in, apropos of nothing. Sensing their confusion he nodded over at Keith. “To see if you can remind her and the rest of the Holts.”

Keith blinked, “And when would I be able to do this? Hunk just pointed out that she’s _not here_ yet.”

Shiro grinned, poster-perfect and entirely unsettling. “At the dinner tomorrow night.”

Hunk pushed his chair backwards with a squeak, visibly tracing Keith’s hackles as they rose with the boy’s ire. Shiro’s grin didn’t even twitch.

The evening pretty much devolved from there.

* * *

Hunk wakes up with a groan.

Keith snorts indelicately into his cereal, watching as the Yellow Paladin, slumped on the ground and half braced against the sole armchair in the Wright-Shirogane apartment, blearily wakes into the artificial lights. The ‘Wright’ half of that arrangement is staring judgmentally down on him like some sort of 0600 fiend. Hunk’s instinctive scream dies quietly in his throat as Adam places a warm bowl of something down on the coffee table, revealing himself to be more angelic in nature than his ominously glinting glasses first promised.

Adam strode towards the door, a jangle of keys and pointing fingers in his wake.

“Leave the dishes in the sink. Keith, don’t forget your navigation text this time.”

The door swung shut. Hunk looked at the brown-sugared oatmeal like it would answer him. Keith, still in pajamas Hunk hadn’t believed he owned, drained the milk from his bowl.

“How the hell did he even notice that?”

* * *

They sidle out the door together. Hunk entertained and a little lost within the weird non-verbal conversation Keith and Shiro had as they departed. Given that Keith ends up leaving the suite with a backpack, full uniform, and Hunk, he figures their fearless leader lost that round.

“Sorry you’re stuck with me for the morning.”

“Huh? Oh, uh… no. I mean,” Keith looked at a poster as they passed, not really reading it. “I sort of planned on following you today.”

“What?” At Hunk’s incredulous look the shorter boy crossed his arms defensively, trying to find a way around admitting that he was fucked if he knew his actual schedule. At this point he wasn’t about to try and ask anyone either.

“It’s not like any of these classes are going to be important anyway.”

Hunk looks torn between amusement and concern for Keith’s academic future but it’s a short look and all too soon, suspiciously soon, Hunk looks away and continues down the hall.

Keith frowns, increasing his pace to match Hunk’s longer strides, trying to riddle out what’s eating the anxious cadet.

It’s… difficult.

Hunk won’t meet his eyes.

Keith takes a breath. Lets it out. He counts tiles as they amble towards Hunk’s first class. Counts up to seven and _patience yields-_

“Just spit it out.” ... _focus._

_I tried._

Hunk startles and his gaze bounces around the bare corridor for a few seconds before he gives up all pretense and stares sullenly at his feet.

“Idon’tthinkweshouldremindLanceyet.”

It takes a second for the muttered comment to process.

It takes less than that for Keith to back Hunk up against one of those bare walls. Hunk’s eyes snap up from the floor as the shorter boy steps into his space, the pair of them thankfully still a fair distance from the cafeteria and thus any prying eyes.

“What are you talking about.” Keith's voice is sharp, almost cutting. Tone dipping low into a near growl that his seventeen-year-old body wasn’t quite capable of sustaining. Hunk flinches but refuses to break, this time keeping eye contact despite the other tells of his typical nervousness peaking. Keith wants to be proud of him, he really does, but is too frustrated in the moment. It doesn’t make _any_ sense. Lance is-

“It’s almost break.”

Another growl scrapes out of his throat. What that has to do with anything- Hunk continues, pressing forward into the conversation and dragging Keith with him.

“He’s going _home,_ Keith.”

Oh.

Keith’s protests, internal and external, fall silent alongside his growl as the picture slots together.

Lance is going _home_.

Home to his family.

The family he missed and cried over and ached for the entirety of their sojourn in space. The family that Lance never planned on leaving, not completely. The family he was forced to abandon for a war he wanted _no part_.

“Oh.” He feels a little numb. A little hollow.

Hunk’s resolute gaze softens, “Yeah, ‘oh’. I just,” a deep breath. Keith takes one too. Tries to center himself despite the lump in his throat. _Patience yields focus_.

“I just think he should spend his break… he shouldn’t spend it aching over… you know.” Hunk grimaced. “Or worse, he’ll feel like he _shouldn’t_ be with them because of,” he stopped and waved his hands almost violently through the air. “Everything!”

Keith pursed his lips and allowed himself a slow blink. One press of his eyes together before he opened them again and nodded. “Lance last, then.”

Hunk shifted so their shoulders bumped (Keith’s shoulder, Hunk’s bicep). His voice was just as lost. It helped.

“Lance last.”


	4. (It's all about perspective)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The most dangerous place in the world is between a mother and her child. Aka: That time a supposed house-wife nearly accomplished what the Galra Empire and preteen Keith failed several times over. Peas were harmed in the making of this chapter. Hunk is an awkward but loveable duck. Eat your veggies kids!

“Do you own anything other than leggings and t-shirts?”

Keith stares at him, unimpressed, from his spot on the bed. Shiro despairs.

“I know Adam bought you actual clothes last winter.”

Keith didn’t flop petulantly back onto the mattress but going by his irritated groan it was a near thing. 

“I don’t see why I can’t just wear the uniform if it’s that-”

Shiro resisted the urge to bounce his head off the closet doors. It wasn’t Keith’s fault he didn’t know what to wear to a small event. He’d eaten in nothing but cafeterias, a few scattered casual restaurants, and their suite’s kitchen for most of his life. And as for the diplomatic meetings and dinners in space? The Paladin armor was shockingly multifunctional and, apparently, counted as appropriate attire. It really wasn’t the teenager’s fault.

He stared despairingly into the shallow depths of Keith’s closet. Still.

“...You can keep the jacket if you wear a pair of real jeans.”  

It was as good as the kid was going to get from Shiro and he knew it. 

“Deal.”

* * *

They’re halfway out the door when Adam rushes forward and presses a sheaf of paper into Keith’s raised palms. “Don’t let him eat any of this.”

He blinks in surprise, not sure why but already gearing up to-

“Colleen Holt should already have a list of her own, but Samuel has a bit of a past as a maverick. I wouldn’t put it past him or his kids to sneak Shiro something.” Adam paused and glared down the hallway. “He’s on  _ thin ice _ given the incident with the gym and the  _ ten cups of tea _ he’s had in the last 27 hours.” 

Keith shifts gears and reassesses, straightening the crumpled list. CAFFEINATED TEA was printed in large blocky letters right at the top. He looks at Adam and then back to the list. It wasn’t in Adam’s flowing scrawl. He shifts the flimsy through his fingers until he reaches the end;  **Dr. Pim** and then an even worse mess scribbled next to it. A signature. 

It was a list, written and then signed by Shiro’s doctor. Probably chased down and interviewed by Adam because Shiro, Keith remembered, had a habit of ignoring emails that weren’t to do with flying, Keith’s grades, or the Kerberos Mission. Which meant...

Keith nodded. 

They’d agreed that there wasn’t a guarantee that the Altean healing pods would be able to root out Shiro’s illness. There wasn’t really any way of knowing if Shiro’s returned health had been a side-effect the galra experiments, something they’d worked out of him in the cloning process, his time in the modified pod… there were too many variables and not enough data. 

The answer, though, had been clear to Keith. 

Shiro needed to stay healthy. 

If that meant keeping to the old fashion ways before he could start knocking heads in space? So be it. 

Shiro was going to live if Keith had to nearly kill him to do it. 

* * *

He’s never been motion sick a day in his life. His feet tap restlessly against the dashboard.

Keith does his best to keep his eyes up, trying to find the horizon between rows of houses.

“Why didn’t we take the bikes again?”

If he just had something to  _ do _ he wouldn’t be nearly so… so...

Shiro doesn’t look away from the road, slowing down as he starts to count the house numbers, “Because you don’t actually have a license and, technically, the bikes are Garrison property.” 

“...Isn’t the car?”

“Oh, look, we’re here!”

His stomach turns over. 

Nerves chew away at Keith’s stomach lining. Ridiculous and unnecessary and completely illogical. He’s lived through far worse than a dinner. Faced down monsters and royalty, lead battles and participated in assassinations and escapades that would pale Shiro’s hair faster than a cup full of bleach.

His stomach turns over once more as the engine shifts and shuts off. 

Is this what Hunk felt  _ all the time _ ? He can feel his respect for the gentle paladin rise little. To feel this every sunrise and still move forward… He takes a breath and unlatches the passenger door, the  _ pop _ echoing as the lock gives way beneath his hand. 

Reminding Shiro, grabbing Hunk - it’d all felt a little bit like a waking dream. 

Easy. Smooth. 

Like opening your eyes underwater. It stung a little but mostly it was just  _ quiet _ . He’d done it in a haze, body moving before he’d given too much thought.

But this?

This wasn’t his brother, his guardian - legal and literal. Wasn’t returning deserved confidence to a peer - to someone his age who was already committed to the program.

This was  _ Pidge _ . His first comrade. The first person to ever demonstrate the same sort of familial commitment he felt towards Shiro. The only person who’d ever really  _ understood _ what he was going through when Shiro was absorbed by the Black Lion. 

This was Pidge… who had never experienced any of that. Who, he hoped, never would again. This was Pidge who was thirteen and whole and at home with her family. 

Pidge who, if he doesn’t do something terrible and desperate and more than likely stupid, will either die in an invasion they’ll never see coming or will lose their family all over again. 

He tucks away the other thoughts. Tucks away the doubts, the fear that his friend (clever and wild and fearless) will be lost to him, to the universe, forever. Because, hey, at least this time he’ll know to stick around and wait for her to make an entry. (Between the two of them they could probably render Iverson legally blind.) The ‘new worst case’ settles low in his stomach and tugs at the corner of his mouth. He pretends not to notice Shiro’s alarmed glance. 

Because Pidge, memories or no, will always be Pidge; the smartest person in the room,  _ every  _ room. 

The door was a chipped green, some sort of darker shade that reminded him of forests in glossy magazines. It stood out against the rows of identical houses, military style being what it was, with it’s shadowed blot of color and upside down welcome mat. 

Keith shrugs Shiro’s narrowed stare off, raising his hand towards the electronic bell. Pidge was going to be _ fine _ , whether or not she remembered. Her courage, her determination - none of that depended on anyone else. 

She was all that long before her flight crew crashed his one-man rescue mission. 

He may have never met Katie Holt, but he can’t imagine she’s any different with longer hair and-

The door swings open, “Are you gonna stand on the porch all day or just until the peas go cold?”

-that’s a dress.

Katie Holt stands in the doorway, thirteen and tiny and not an ounce less fierce than she was at fifteen in the cockpit of the Green Lion.

_ Yeah, _ Keith thinks sarcastically as Shiro makes honest commentary on the delicious smells wafting through the open door,  _ this is going to go so well. _

* * *

“Don’t take this the wrong way but… What are you doing in my apartment?”

Hunk grins nervously from his crouched position in front of the oven.

“Uh…”

Adam’s foot beings to tap against the tile. Hunk feels himself sweat, “I’m… baking?”

There. Simple, true, completely factual-

“I can see that.” Adam doesn’t seem any more appeased or less perplexed, “I’m wondering why you’re baking in  _ my _ apartment.” 

_ Erk. _

* * *

Dinner is… Well, it’s not as awful as he’d feared.

Brown eyes bore into the side of his head. He can’t tell if it’s Pid- _ Katie _ or Matt. They seem to be taking turns but he can’t work out the pattern. Keith catches eyes sliding away from his face in the peripheral. 

_ But it sure is awkward. _

“Sooo… you never mentioned you had a kid, Shiro!” 

The table descends into chaos.

P- _ Katie _ kicks Matt’s something under the table with the world’s least subtle  **thunk** _.  _ Colleen Holt chastises her son while intermittently reassuring Shiro that,  _ no, he doesn’t look old enough to be a father of a teenager _ . Matt doesn’t seem to care much at all that his mother is boring holes through his head with the power of her alternating gaze; he’s more preoccupied with attempting to kick his shorter limbed sibling back and is, somehow, Keith marvels as he picks up his plate and scoots away from the table-clothed arena, failing spectacularly. He looks up over his escaping peas to see Sam Holt peer curiously at the top of Shiro’s bent head and has all of a tick to realize that the older man has caught sight of those inescapable white hairs. 

_ Yep. _ He thinks as Sam leans closer in,  _ not as bad as it could be. _

He takes another bite.

(He wasn’t actually raised by coyotes, no matter what Adam claimed. He knew better than to refuse a host’s offered meal. Besides, this was  _ way _ better than the Altean/Arusian food. He was, what was the phrase? Right. ‘Getting while the gettin’ was good’.)

* * *

Adam picked at the food left on his plate, nonplussed look still on his face nearly 90 minutes and two helpings later.

“This is very good but…” There’s silence as Hunk washes the last pan, long done with his own meal, then, “How did you even get in here?”

The cadet gives a full body flinch and gives more of a whimper than a chuckle. 

“W-would you believe me if I told you it’s something I picked up from a friend?”

Brown eyes narrow, laughter creases tightening like a cobra around still squirming prey. 

“Oh really?”

* * *

Shiro elbows Keith as Colleen begins to gather up the plates and glasses. The now-teenager hisses under his breath and snatches up Shiro and Matt’s plates as well as his own.

“Here, let me help with that.” 

She tuts and refuses but he can tell she at least appreciates the show of manners. He makes it easier on both of them, “I have a couple of questions to ask about Shiro’s diet. Adam mentioned you’re old friend with Dr. Pim?” 

He smirks as Shiro’s betrayed gaze bores into the side of his head as Coleen enthusiastically begins to rattle off her agreement. Keeping Shiro alive in space had basically been a full-time job on top of being a Paladin. He’s not about to lose Shiro to some damn food allergen.

_ Hope you enjoyed those bread rolls _ , he thinks, and then feels his adrenalin spike as P-forget it, as Pidge ducks past him. She’s got the remainder of the peas held above her head in the serving bowl, dodging and weaving around her dad’s playful grabs.

Something burns in his stomach at the sight. Anxious and jealous and fiercely protective. 

His hand snaps out without the rest of his permission, fingers curling around a flailing wrist as short legs tangle up in a just-too-long dress as she tries to dodge around both him and an ill-placed chest of drawers. Just a soft press of fingers, a small tug to bring her back to center. His whole head lights up, burning and breaking and it’s a relief when he’s able to set the dishes down in hot soapy water. The suds lash up his scalded arms and he rubs already heat numb fingers into the plates submerged beyond sight. 

Anything, anything at all, to take his mind away from the fractured pulse rattling through his skull and the slow but dawning realization of what he’s done. 

A hand presses through his fringe, cool against his scalp. He jerks back, reflexive and half wild, only to meet concerned hazel eyes. Keith freezes, one hand still clenched tight over the rim of the kitchen sink, as Coleen gently steps forward into his space. She waits, an achingly embarrassingly long time, for his heart to stop racing before she shifts her hand to press her wrist against his forehead. Her fingers rub soothingly against his scalp. It’s… it’s strange. His heart has slowed, calmed almost against his will, but the tension coiling his frame into a statue hasn’t loosened a jot. She hums under her breath and slides her hand from his hair, easy as that. 

“You don’t feel like you have a fever but you do look a bit peaky. Why don’t you pull up a chair and we can go over that list, hm?” 

The drag metal against faux-stone is surprisingly soft, Coleen already bringing a chair to him despite her earlier words. For a moment, Keith thinks that’s going to be it. That maybe he’s just having some sort of weird flash. Orthostasis, maybe. That weird dizzy spell Adam is always complaining about whenever he jumps up too fast these days. 

There’s a loud crash from the dining room, male voices rising in concern and confusion and Keith has all of a tick to close his eyes and bite curses back behind his teeth. Because of course,  _ of course _ , it’s not going to be that easy. 

In his defense, he was a little more worried about Matt, who’d grown into a reasonably decent warrior, than the delicate and kind Mrs. Holt.

In retrospect, that really’d been their first mistake. 

* * *

Shiro would like it noted on record that he had exactly zero warning.

One moment he was reminding Keith about his hard-learned manners and agonizing over what  _ couldn’t be _ white hairs cropping up this soon into his admittedly stressful life, the next Pid- _ Katie _ staggers hip first into the western style dining table, upends an entire bowl of peas, and then clutches at her banged hip as though she’s been shot. 

He’d also like it noted that Matt and Sam are first unreasonably sad about the spilled peas, their mourning of which should count as a distraction all on its own, and second that he, for all of his experience in both earthen combat and non-consensual gladiatorial arenas, in the midst of the confusion, did not in any way sense Coleen Holt approaching. 

In a few days, Shiro will tease both Holt women about how close they came to owing him a new kidney. There will be in jokes about sharp objects and short tempers and Shiro’s ‘cat-like reflexes’. 

In a few moments, Shiro will feel fortunate that he succeeds in the very basic goal of ‘not getting stabbed today’. (They all agree that it was a close thing.)

For the most part though, it’s a blur of copper and raven hair back-tracked by hysterical wailing and one lost alarmed growl.

* * *

Colleen, Keith thinks as he kicks the still sudsy butter knife more solidly under the table, is one fierce woman. Pidge  _ definitely _ took more after her than her father, who, though he looks quite severe in response to the distress his daughter is still working through, has yet to go for a kill strike in her honor.

Why she was the one left on Earth he doesn’t think he’ll ever quite understand. He glances at one of the many equations scribbled along the warm sunshine-yellow walls. Then again, the administration might just have wanted to keep her where they could see her. 

He sympathized, very glad he’ll be having his second (third? Did the first timeline count?) puberty in space. He doesn’t even want to know what the Garrison medical staff would do to him should he somehow fuck this all up and have it while under their command. Or worse, without Krolia, his mother, there to guide him through the rougher patches.

A small fist hits the wooden table with an alarmingly loud thud. 

“What is going on?!” 

Green eyes narrow dangerously as Colleen tugs her youngest against her side more firmly. 

“Shirogane suddenly wants to back out of the Kerberos mission, Cadet Kogane apparently  _ exists _ ,” Keith slants his eyes at Shiro who shrugs before flinching as Colleen’s wrath-filled glare sears him back to the bone, “and  _ something _ has happened to my daught-”

“Mom…” 

“Don’t you  _ ‘Mom’  _ me young lady!” Colleen’s voice is teetering into shrill, eyes wide and Keith has the sudden epiphany that the woman is maybe on the edge of hysterics. “Something is wrong. I can feel it.” Her hand trembles as it smooths down the length of Pidge’s still-long hair. 

Keith swallows back the cloying envy clogging his throat. It competes for real estate there with bitter nostalgia as Colleen, every inch a scholar and not one tell-tale twitch of warrior breeding, stares his brother down from nearly half a foot away. The feeling blooms like a bruise beneath his heart, envy and longing and the bittersweet knowledge that she’s out there, in the cosmos,  _ waiting _ . It leaves him very little concentration to help Shiro as the most dangerous place in the world narrows its scope to focus solely on him. 

“It’s… it’s a little complicated.” 

Colleen Holt, all of 5’6” and filled with the wrath of elder gods or perhaps just a mother angered, pulls Shiro half an inch lower by the front of his shirt. 

“Tell. Me.”

Definitely reached hysterics. 

* * *

“Time travel.”

“...Yes.”

There was an even longer pause. Then, suddenly, Colleen punched the air. 

“Adelfos’ Principal!” 

Samuel looked put out, arms crossed defensively as he muttered darkly under his breath. His wife laughed and leaned into his side, hand braced on one knee. (And if that hand was white-knuckled and more of a grip than a friendly grasp? No one made any notice. Keith kept his foot atop the butter knife.)

“Don’t be a sore loser, dear.”

Pidge blinked, reaching up to adjust glasses that weren’t there. “Uh, Mom?”

The Green Paladin flinched back as her mother’s head snapped towards her. 

“And you! Breaking into the Garrison! Joining a war effort! No calls, no  _ note _ !” 

Matt leaned away from the oncoming storm, “Busted.”

(For a moment, Pidge questions why she searched across a galaxy for this asshole. It takes her a long time to drag her gaze off his unscarred, well-fed, indoor-pale face.)

“I haven’t  _ done anything! _ ” Pidge finally squawks. 

“Yet.” Matt chimes in, helpfully. He yelps as she kicks him again. 

Keith takes a long slurp of his just-sweet-enough coffee. 

Yep. This was going great. 

* * *

It takes… a seriously long time to get past the space-travel thing. He thought time travel would be the sticking point, but apparently, that had a logical and apparently reasonable explanation.

Pidge disappearing out into the cosmos on a vengeance quest? That wasn’t going over nearly as well. 

“My baby, out saving the galaxy!” 

“Mrs. Holt I don’t… I don’t think she can breathe.”

“And  _ you _ !” She whirled on Shiro, “ _ You let her do it! _ ”

Keith sinks deeper into the couch cushions, shoulder knocking against a similarly slouched Matt. It was going to be a long night. 

* * *

Adam’s gaze is unwavering even as he chews his cheek, muscles twitching, visibly frustrated.

The tower wobbled dangerously. 

Hunk drew a breath and then held it in silence, trying to find a diplomatic way to tell the officer across from him that after Hunk had pulled the blocks out of the bottom support there wasn’t really a way for him to…

“Umm… so… why Jenga? No that I don’t like Jenga, I love it, but I am, a, an engineering major, you know? So not many people offer to play.” 

Adam yanked his hand back as the blocks swayed from left to right and scowled, “Keith is terrible at it.”

Yeah that was… that was certainly a picture.

Hunk struggled with the mental image of Keith trying to play Jenga. It all pretty much ended in shouting and splinters and possibly fire no matter how many permutations he ran through. Hunk rubbed his fingers against one of many dents in the worn coffee table, wondering if the scratches were all accidental or if some of them were tally marks. Either Keith’s from victories or, maybe, Adam’s as a history of other people’s rage-quits. 

He looked like the kind of guy who inspired rage-quits.

“I thought it was a generational thing.” The officer groused.

“Being terrible at Jenga?”

Adam shrugged.

* * *

“So… we’re about six years out from alien armageddon?”

Keith and Shiro exchange glances. The elder shrugs, “Give or take. Everything really started with Kerberos.”

Sam strokes his beard, “Well, that would explain your sudden reluctance to go on the mission.”

“When were we up there?” Matt paused and waved a hand, “I mean, when is that ship supposed to pass through? Do you know why they were there?”

“You mean… did finding the three of us on Kerberos,” Shiro has to pause and take a breath, “Somehow postpone the invasion?”

It feels like someone’s taken a spoon to Keith’s insides. 

Why  _ did _ the galra turn back once they had Shiro and the Holts? 

He knew that they’d once found remnants of the Blue Lion’s energy, the same thing that’d called him to the desert, but Krolia told him she’d wiped Earth from all of their records. Their planet, the whole system, was supposed to be  _ safe _ . 

What  _ was _ that ship doing out there? If there wasn’t any Kerberos Mission to derail… would they just keep going until they found a planet with life? 

Until they found Earth?

(Found Earth unready and unprotected. Found the human paladins with only one lion anywhere  _ near  _ them.) 

Matt’s gaze flicked between the two brothers, nervous suddenly at the ominous silence layering the room. He glanced over at his mother, “Uh... That wasn’t supposed to be a hard question?”

Keith barely heard them, brain already tripping over the numerous and innumerably awful new ‘worst case’ scenarios suddenly spasming along his spine.

What were they going to do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been split into two parts because it wasn't flowing as one whole.   
> I'm still reeling from s8. It and s7 have sort of just merged into one big disappointing blob for me so that's... that means I'll have to rewatch BOTH seasons (probably) to scour out the details.   
> I'm just gonna smack on a 'non-canon compliant post s6' tag up there now and save myself the trouble??


End file.
